Shining new light on public pay

Today the Oshkosh Northwestern launches a six week series examining the salaries of public employees in Wisconsin: "What We Pay: Your tax dollars and the salaries they support." The Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team's project is designed to be the most thorough and exhaustive look at public sector pay across all levels of government in Wisconsin. Indeed, our research found no news organization or government agency has ever collected and made available such data in this manner.

Our intent is to provide taxpayers detailed information which allows them to review and analyze the data to draw their own conclusions about the cost, size and efficiency of government based on facts, not speculation, innuendo or generalities. Long before the explosive debate over public union collective bargaining rights, Wisconsin was engaged in a long and sustained debate about the rightful size and cost of government.

For a number of years, The Northwestern has annually produced databases of local public employee pay and benefits, including public school teachers and administrators, and city of Oshkosh and Winnebago County employees.

This project is a natural extension of those efforts, though on a much larger scale to include data for all employees in the state, including the University of Wisconsin System, Wisconsin Technical Colleges, K-12 public schools, state of Wisconsin workers, federal and postal employees, cities, towns and villages, and counties.

Publishing individual names and salaries, to be sure, will raise some eyebrows and invites fair questions about the appropriate boundaries of privacy. Our belief is that this information helps create a deeper, specific understanding of government which allows the public to make better informed decisions about their government and the public employee salaries they fund through taxes.

Ultimately, this transparency should help drive smart and informed public policy discussions and decisions.

In fact, the first part of this series our analysis found a substantial pay gap between University of Wisconsin Oshkosh professors and teachers at Fox Valley Technical College along with re-affirming the growing compensation gap between professors in the UW System and public colleges and universities across the nation.

Such findings should prompt state leaders crafting a new two-year budget to take steps to begin addressing the gaps and maintain the quality of instruction and research in the system.

While the collection and distribution of this information is a first in Wisconsin, it is not unprecedented. The state of Missouri's official Blue Book guide to state government includes detailed lists of state employees, titles and pay, a requirement to be published under state law. Quite fittingly, it is included as part of the Missouri Accountability Portal. Missouri leaders understood that providing this information is integral to being accountable to the public that is footing the salaries.

Over the next six weeks, this exclusive series will bring to light excesses and practices that will need to end, highlight pay gaps that should be rectified and shine a light on the honest, efficient and honorable work provided by public employees across Wisconsin.

The Final Thought: Six-part series designed to help readers gain new understanding and insights on government pay in Wisconsin.